The Old Water Mill Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAAABBAAAACCDDEEFFAA GHDDAAADDIII DDJJAADDAAABBBKKKK DDLLLDDMMDD DDNNOLPPQQRRSSTTUU AAAAUUUUDDVVAAAAUUWW W UUKKXXKKQQWKDDUUAAKK DD YYZZBBDDDDDDAAD ADDDDDA2A2AAWild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise | A |
Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies | A |
Pilot great clouds like towering argosies | A |
And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze | A |
With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach | B |
Of placid murmur under elm and beech | B |
The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms | A |
Of woodland quiet summered with perfumes | A |
The creek in whose clear shallows minnow schools | A |
Glitter or dart and by whose deeper pools | A |
The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt | C |
That often startled from the freckled flaunt | C |
Of blackberry lilies where they feed or hide | D |
Trail a lank flight along the forestside | D |
With eery clangor Here a sycamore | E |
Smooth wave uprooted builds from shore to shore | E |
A headlong bridge and there a storm hurled oak | F |
Lays a long dam where sand and gravel choke | F |
The water's lazy way Here mistflower blurs | A |
Its bit of heaven there the ox eye stirs | A |
Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold and here | G |
A gray cool stain like dawn's own atmosphere | H |
The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest | D |
And over all at slender flight or rest | D |
The dragonflies like coruscating rays | A |
Of lapis lazuli and chrysoprase | A |
Drowsily sparkle through the summer days | A |
And dewlap deep here from the noontide heat | D |
The bell hung cattle find a cool retreat | D |
And through the willows girdling the hill | I |
Now far now near borne as the soft winds will | I |
Comes the low rushing of the water mill | I |
- | |
Ah lovely to me from a little child | D |
How changed the place wherein once undefiled | D |
The glad communion of the sky and stream | J |
Went with me like a presence and a dream | J |
Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands | A |
Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands | A |
Of summer and the birds of field and wood | D |
Called to me in a tongue I understood | D |
And in the tangles of the old rail fence | A |
Even the insect tumult had some sense | A |
And every sound a happy eloquence | A |
And more to me than wisest books can teach | B |
The wind and water said whose words did reach | B |
My soul addressing their magnificent speech | B |
Raucous and rushing from the old mill wheel | K |
That made the rolling mill cogs snore and reel | K |
Like some old ogre in a faerytale | K |
Nodding above his meat and mug of ale | K |
- | |
How memory takes me back the ways that lead | D |
As when a boy through woodland and through mead | D |
To orchards fruited or to fields in bloom | L |
Or briery fallows like a mighty room | L |
Through which the winds swing censers of perfume | L |
And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit | D |
A wildwood feast that stayed the plowboy's foot | D |
When to the tasseling acres of the corn | M |
He drove his team fresh in the primrose morn | M |
And from the liberal banquet nature lent | D |
Plucked dewy handfuls as he whistling went | D |
- | |
A boy once more I stand with sunburnt feet | D |
And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat | D |
Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw | N |
Near by the thresher whose insatiate maw | N |
Devours the sheaves hot drawling out its hum | O |
Like some great sleepy bee above a bloom | L |
Made drunk with honey while grown big with grain | P |
The bulging sacks receive the golden rain | P |
Again I tread the valley sweet with hay | Q |
And hear the bobwhite calling far away | Q |
Or wood dove cooing in the elder brake | R |
Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake | R |
As swift a rufous instant in the glen | S |
The red fox leaps and gallops to his den | S |
Or standing in the violet colored gloam | T |
Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home | T |
From church or fair or country barbecue | U |
Which half the county to some village drew | U |
- | |
How spilled with berries were its summer hills | A |
And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills | A |
And chestnuts too burred from the spring's long flowers | A |
June's when their tree tops streamed delirious showers | A |
Of blossoming silver cool crepuscular | U |
And like a nebulous radiance shone afar | U |
And maples how their sappy hearts would pour | U |
Rude troughs of syrup when the winter hoar | U |
Steamed with the sugar kettle day and night | D |
And red the snow was streaked with firelight | D |
Then it was glorious the mill dam's edge | V |
One slope of frosty crystal laid a ledge | V |
Of pearl across above which sleeted trees | A |
Tossed arms of ice that clashing in the breeze | A |
Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles | A |
Thin as the peal of far off elfin bells | A |
A sound that in my city dreams I hear | U |
That brings before me under skies that clear | U |
The old mill in its winter garb of snow | W |
Its frozen wheel like a hoar beard below | W |
And its west windows two deep eyes aglow | W |
- | |
Ah ancient mill still do I picture o'er | U |
Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain strewn floor | U |
Thy door like some brown honest hand of toil | K |
And honorable with service of the soil | K |
Forever open to which on his back | X |
The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack | X |
And while the miller measures out his toll | K |
Again I hear above the cogs' loud roll | K |
That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway | Q |
The harmless gossip of the passing day | Q |
Good country talk that says how so and so | W |
Lived died or wedded how curculio | K |
And codling moth play havoc with the fruit | D |
Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot | D |
Or what is news from town next county fair | U |
How well the crops are looking everywhere | U |
Now this now that on which their interests fix | A |
Prospects for rain or frost and politics | A |
While all around the sweet smell of the meal | K |
Filters warm pouring from the rolling wheel | K |
Into the bin beside which mealy white | D |
The miller looms dim in the dusty light | D |
- | |
Again I see the miller's home between | Y |
The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green | Y |
Again the miller greets me gaunt and brown | Z |
Who oft o'erawed my boyhood with his frown | Z |
And gray browed mien again he tries to reach | B |
My youthful soul with fervid scriptural speech | B |
For he of all the countryside confessed | D |
The most religious was and goodliest | D |
A Methodist who at all meetings led | D |
Prayed with his family ere they went to bed | D |
No books except the Bible had he read | D |
At least so seemed it to my younger head | D |
All things of Heaven and Earth he'd prove by this | A |
Be it a fact or mere hypothesis | A |
For to his simple wisdom reverent | D |
- | |
'The Bible says' | A |
was all of argument | D |
God keep his soul his bones were long since laid | D |
Among the sunken gravestones in the shade | D |
Of those dark lichened rocks that wall around | D |
The family burying ground with cedars crowned | D |
Where bristling teasel and the brier combine | A2 |
With clambering wood rose and the wildgrape vine | A2 |
To hide the stone whereon his name and dates | A |
Neglect with mossy hand obliterates | A |
Madison Julius Cawein
(1)
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